The New Year in Space: NASA’s Missions and Events in 2012

While the future is unknown and unknowable, bureaucratic agencies such as NASA like to have their agendas set far in advance. This means that we can look forward to a great deal of exciting events in the coming year.

Along with the regular suite of expected launches, NASA will be undertaking a number of exciting new missions, likely making some incredible discoveries, and wrestling with potential problems both within the agency and without. Here, Wired takes a look at some of the most important missions and milestones happening in space in 2012.

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Lunar GRAIL

NASA’s 2012 got off to an auspicious start when the second of the twin GRAIL satellites successfully entered orbit around the moon during the early hours of the new year. (The first probe entered orbit in the late afternoon of Dec. 31.) Starting in March, the two probes will collect data in order to provide an accurate map of the moon’s gravitational field.

Such information will give researchers a glimpse of what goes on beneath the lunar surface, allowing them to answer many long-standing mysteries about the moon’s origin. One recent theory posits that the Earth once had a second moon that smashed into our current natural satellite. If this is true, the GRAIL satellites will find that the lunar far side has a thicker crust than the facing side.

Dragon Docks With ISS

The California-based company SpaceX is scheduled to launch its unmanned Dragon capsule on Feb. 7 to dock with the International Space Station. If successful, it will be the first time a private company has accomplished such a goal, and may be the start of a new era for commercial spaceflight.

Dragon will carry supplies for the crew, though nothing crucial just in case the venture fails for some reason. A success would put the company in an excellent position to start offering services to ferry astronauts and future supplies, allowing NASA to stop buying seats on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

Financial Angst

There will be much anxiety leading up to the release of President Obama’s proposed federal budget for the 2013 fiscal year, expected during the 2nd week of February. The budget proposal will suggest how much funding NASA should receive in 2013 and beyond. Over the year, these numbers will be subject to a long and bitter debate process in Congress, which has been looking for ways to slash expenditures in recent years. If 2013 funding is anything like the last couple years, NASA may have to do more and more with less and less.

Of high importance will be the details of funding the James Webb Space Telescope, the next generation space-based scientific instrument set to replace the aging Hubble Space Telescope. Already costing far beyond its initial proposed budget, JWST drew the wrath of members of the House of Representatives, who voted to cancel its funding last year. The final version of the 2012 budget bill eventually included funds for JWST, though it came with the stipulation that NASA take the needed money out of other programs. The president's budget proposal might give some clues as to how this allocation will be made.

NASA officials are also looking to the 2013 budget before making a final decision on how much they can contribute to future Mars missions. The agency currently has a deal with the European Space Agency to conduct two joint missions to the Red Planet –- one in 2016 and another in 2018 -– though the agency’s fiscal problems have made it increasingly unlikely that NASA will be able to honor its commitments. ESA may turn to the Russian space agency to complete both missions, though Russia has had a poor track record thus far with Mars missions.

Shortly after the president’s budget announcement, NASA is expected to hold Senior Review processes to decide whether or not to continue funding many of its current missions. This may be particularly painful in the agency’s Planetary Science division, which is expected to see flat or declining budgets over the next several years. Officials may have to choose between the scientific return on several ongoing missions, including the Cassini spacecraft, Opportunity Mars rover, and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Studying Radiation

NASA will launch several new missions to better understand radiation and charged particles in the universe. The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) is scheduled for launch on March 16. NuSTAR will scan the night sky for high energy x-rays, building on and seeing at higher ranges than previous x-ray telescopes such as Chandra. It will help astronomers answer many questions about the universe and look for supernova remnants, black holes a billion times the mass of the sun, and subatomic particles accelerated to nearly the speed of light.

Discovery Mission Selection

Late in the spring, NASA is expected to make an announcement on future planetary exploration missions for its Discovery class program. These relatively small and low-budget missions have often yielded great scientific insights. Currently, the competition is down to three proposed missions, one of which will be chosen for a potential 2016 launch date.

The Geophysical Monitoring Station (GEMS) would drop a seismometer on the Martian surface to study the structure and composition of the planet’s interior. Alternatively, the Titan Mare Explorer (TiME) would land a small boat on a lake of Saturn’s moon Titan in order to explore the strange processes of an alien sea. Finally, the Comet Hopper would do exactly that: send a satellite to hop on a comet multiple times and study how its surface changes as it approaches the sun.

Eclipses and Transits

The details of celestial mechanics in our own solar system are very predictable and, luckily, not dependent on NASA's budget cycle. The year 2012 will see one important and rare event with the transit of Venus on June 6. While information from the occurrence was once vital for astronomers looking to calculate the distance between the Earth and the sun, it is now merely a spectacular cosmic show for all to enjoy.

The moon will appear to partially consume the sun on May 20 during an annular solar eclipse. In this type of eclipse, the moon transits in front of the sun, partially blocking it but leaving a small ring of light around the edge. The event will be seen to viewers placed along a path over the Pacific Ocean from southern China to the Western United States.

A total solar eclipse – where the moon will completely block out the sun’s light – will occur on November 13, though will mostly occur over open ocean. The only place on land to see it will be parts of Northern Australia. Two partial lunar eclipses will also occur during the year, on June 4 and November 28, respectively.

MSL Lands

The highly anticipated Mars Science Laboratory will undergo a stomach-churning landing maneuver in August to reach the surface of the Red Planet. The largest object that can currently be placed on the Martian surface, MSL is a one-ton rover that will search the planet for signs of water past and present and, more tantalizingly, evidence for native life.

The descent will entail a never-before-attempted procedure. The lander will first plummet through the atmosphere before opening a 51-foot parachute to slow down to subsonic speeds. Around 25 feet above the ground, a UFO-like platform will fire rockets and hover above the Martian plains before lowering the rover gently down on a set of wires known as a "sky crane." The hovering platform will then fly far from the rover and crash into the planet's surface.

Unknown New Discoveries

One thing that can be known with certainty is that the future will be surprising. Over the course of the year, NASA’s current suite of missions will continue churning out scientific data, potentially leading to an unexpected discovery. Among the agency's ongoing missions are the following:

The Mars-exploring Opportunity rover, still going strong despite the shutdown of its twin on March 22, 2011, will provide important information as it waits out the Martian winter in a favorable spot around Endeavor crater. The planet-hunting Kepler satellite will get ever closer to spotting an Earth-like extrasolar planet, releasing new data in January, July, and October.

The Cassini spacecraft, circling the ringed beauty Saturn since 2004, will continue exploring the gas giant and its environ, making a total of 20 flybys around the liquid bearing moon Titan and 10 flybys of the water-spewing Enceladus. The MESSENGER spacecraft, in orbit around Mercury, will continue photographing the planet's polar regions, potentially discovering ice in the deep shadows of craters. And should the agency have the money, the Deep Impact satellite, which shot a projectile at comet Tempel 1 to study its interior and later flew by comet Hartley 2, may make a small course correction in October to set up for an encounter with asteroid 2002 GT in 2020

Image: The smallest extrasolar planets that Kepler has spotted to date. 2012 may see the discovery of smaller and more Earth-like exoplanets. NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech.

Red Space

Considering NASA’s budget problems and internal squabbles, some in the space industry fear 2012 might be the year China eclipses the United States in space prowess.

In 2011, China already performed more orbital launches than the U.S., barely squeaking by with 19 to 18. In addition, the Chinese government released a document outlining their five-year space plan, which includes new launch vehicles, robotic lunar landers, and preliminary studies to land people on the moon.

Other analysts counter the idea that the U.S. is sagging in space, pointing out that there is nothing new in China’s recently released space plans and that America still leads in human spaceflight. Furthermore, China’s space investments are low-budget. But the Chinese government’s plan can be carried out with little interruption, whereas NASA’s policies are subject to the whims of the White House and Congress, which may change every few years.